Six Months Until European Elections; Pirate Party Scorecard All One Could Hope For

Six months from today, on May 25, the Pirate Party movement has its first re-election as the Swedish Pirate Party defends its two seats in the European Parliament. Getting re-elected is a different ballgame than getting elected as a challenger; defending the title means you need to show results. The Pirate Party’s scorecard for re-election is not just acceptable; it is downright impressive.

In the summer of 2009, the Swedish Pirate Party got elected to the European Parliament with first one, then two seats, after having become Sweden’s largest party in the important sub-30 demographic. This was the breakthrough success of the Pirate Party movement that has since been replicated in many other countries out of the 70 where the party has been founded so far.

But getting elected on a platform of change and progress is something different than getting re-elected on having delivered. So what does the Pirate Party scorecard look like as the first term comes to an end? With six months to go until the election, and the election campaign more or less getting into gear today, let’s look at why the Swedish Pirate Party deserves re-election: let’s look at what has been delivered in terms of making Europe a better place – and all this with just two out of 750+ Members of European Parliament.

The Pirate Party prevented three strikes in Europe. The very first thing that happened during the term was the final negotiation of the so-called Telecoms Package, where the copyright industry had been lobbying very heavily for the introduction of three strikes in Europe – wanting to shut people off the net on mere accusation of breaking the copyright monopoly, denying them the most basic of citizens’ rights for inconveniencing an obsolete business interest. But through a combination of skill, luck, and hard work, a Pirate Party representative (Christian Engström) ended up in the final negotiations group from the European Parliament, and there was no way the Pirate Party would accept Parliament getting steamrolled by obsolete business interests. Three strikes was successfully prevented, and made illegal in all of Europe, singlehandedly thanks to important footwork from the Swedish Pirate Party.

The Pirate Party stopped the ACTA anti-liberty trade agreement. Through hard, disciplined and tenacious work, the Pirate Party was able to galvanize the Parliament-internal prong of the two-prong approach to stop this beast that was, at best, shameless mail-order legislation from the copyright industry. While many activist groups worked hard to achieve this result, and the credit lies with all of them, the Pirate Party was the only one on the inside of Parliament doors to give the Members of European Parliament a accurate picture, a different picture from the one painted by corporate shills. Therefore, having the Pirate Party in the European Parliament was not sufficient to win, but having the Pirate Party on the inside was a necessary component for victory – from Amelia Andersdotter’s footwork in the Industry committee to Christian Engström’s in the Legal Affairs committee. We successfully aided the pressure externally too, from reporting on events, to helping organize and galvanize the external resistance, to successfully suggesting flowers to be sent after the vote to representatives that chose to represent the people rather than corporates, in an unprecedented move that the European Parliament could impossibly ignore. Our combination of inside insight, never-ceasing explaining, and external activism was a key enabler for this work. And as ACTA was killed in Europe, it died worldwide.

The Pirate Party has won mainstream support for radical but necessary copyright monopoly reform. Going from a proposal to getting mainstream support is hard, but one of the major party groups in the European Parliament – the Green Group – has thrown all their weight behind the Pirate Party’s proposal for copyright monopoly reform, including cutting the baseline commercial monopoly to five years from publication, always allowing noncommercial sharing, a criminalization of any form of DRM, free sampling and remixing, and more. While the Green Group alone isn’t a majority, this is a huge step toward one of the end goals.

Overall, the first term can be described as a series of brilliant and successful political moves, a drawing of the infamous line in the sand, and a turning the tide of the war on civil liberties by the obsolete copyright industry. The copyright industry’s offensive has been successfully halted, through hard and tenacious work. But the momentum needs to continue in order to push the battle lines of civil liberties forward.

Here’s a sample of things that we already know will be handled during the next term, where the Pirate Party needs to be present:

Copyright monopoly reform. We don’t know when this item arrives, nor what the initial proposal will look like. But we know that we will be necessary to dissect and counter the worst parts that will initially come from so-called “stakeholders”, meaning the worst industries. Actually, we’re quite optimistic that with the natural rejuvenation of Parliament, we will be able to drag the copyright industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The goal, of course, is to fully legalize at least the noncommercial sharing of knowledge and culture – something that should never have had to wait this long. This is within the realm of possible outcomes, something it wasn’t before the Pirate Party’s first term.

Civil liberties online. The European Parliament has already started a series of hearings following Snowden’s revelations of widespread abuse of power by the American, British, and Swedish security services. This will continue well into the next term.

Net neutrality. This crucial battle for the future of the Internet (and, I may add, against rent-seeking by an obsolete telecom industry) is only starting, and the first stake in the ground shows that there is much work to be done. Net neutrality or not? That question will probably be determined during the next term.

Another trade agreement. Today, much focus lies on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, but an equally insidious agreement named TTIP is in the works – all in secret, as usual – between the US and the EU. We may need to scuttle that one as we did ACTA, if the initial reports of downright outrageous content holds true.

The Swedish Pirate Party aims to defend its two seats and is gunning for a third, out of Sweden’s twenty. That’s an ambitious goal, but within the realm of the realistic. Whether that goal succeeds will largely depend on you, you who are reading this. You are probably following this blog and these articles, and a lot of the future success depends on people just talking about the Pirate Party between now and six months out, causing many people to hear the name, over and over again.

Talk about the Pirate Party with your friends and colleagues. Mention the party by name, and mention that it needs to get re-elected. The swarm way of tens of thousands of people who do something small is what enabled the victory in the first place, and it can work just as brilliantly again. You can be a part of this.

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

Discussion

Zirgs

November 26, 2013

Just three seats – that’s laughable.

gurrfield

November 26, 2013

Well… everything starts out small. People laughed at the green parties 30 years ago also, but now they’re a stable part of politics in many parts of EU.

Anonymous

December 13, 2013

more importantly, green policies have become the law of the land throughout europe

Innue

November 27, 2013

And yet, it’s enough to get seats on committees, to be able to put questions directly to the commission, to get access to other parliamentarians in or outside of your group in order to explain to them why your point of view is the correct one, and so on. Access that you would have to spend millions of euros on every year if you were a corporation. The difference between 0 seats and 3 seats is much larger than the difference between 3 seats and 30 seats.

I-For-One

November 26, 2013

I for one, would like to say

Thank You Rick (and the countless others), but mainly YOU Rick for your dedication and all the heat and spying and hassles you must take to maintain your (our?) ideals and morals.

I have yet to read a single thing you have written that doesn’t make complete sense.

Yours Truly
Anonymous Coward

I-For-One

November 26, 2013

PS: Thanks for Swarmwise – maybe Zirgs (comment #1) could do with a copy

Well it would be a 50% increase, which, if any other party would manage that, would be blocklettered from here til Timbuktu. So, in absolute numbers it is still not a majority but well, what type of growth are you expecting ? In any case, I vote pirate party if I would still have voting rights.

Per "wertigon" Ekström

November 26, 2013

Don’t forget a dozen or so minor victories as well.

Nick

November 27, 2013

An interesting article maybe related to Swarm governance in Spain. If any Spanish speaker know what this is all about please tell them about Swarmwise.

Since this blog nowadays seems to be an international evangelism blog focused on moving the entire political pirate movement forward, i don’t understand this post, since it only focuses on the Swedish Pirate Party and it’s campaign?

In the 2009 elections political pirates only ran from one single state in the EU, and they easily got elected. In this upcoming elections, they will enter from all 29 states i assume? That means that an all-you-can-hope-for-scorecard for the political pirates is getting between 5-15% of the votes from all those nations, which would result in everything from 30 to over 100 seats in the 2014 elections?

Those numbers are impressive, and definitely doable, and with this in mind i see no point in limiting this motivational post to focus on only the Swedish numbers, of whether one, two or three candidates get elected? In comparison to what’s likely, those numbers a minuscule.

And once the polls start mentioning that pirates around Europe are polling around 4-5% or 7-12%, not only in one country, but in all, people will no longer feel that a pirate vote is wasted in any way(naah, it’s just two or three seats out of 800), since the potential combined numbers can be getting 100 pirates elected, that’s a winning train, if there ever was one, that in combination with the Green group(the only growing group in the last elections) and the liberals most likely will fundamentally change the political landscape in Europe in no time at all regarding both copyright issues and privacy issues.

But i haven’t seen one single blog post from any pirate that mentions those numbers of what’s actually possible, and likely, in less than six months time.

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